


the repeated image of the lover destroyed

by windupclock



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Repression, implied but nonetheless!, six thousand year slow burn baby!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 15:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19153930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupclock/pseuds/windupclock
Summary: We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought, so do it over, give me another version, a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over and over, another bowl of soup.The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.(or: Crowley falls in love)





	the repeated image of the lover destroyed

**Author's Note:**

> title + description from litany in which certain things are crossed out by richard siken, which is a painfully crowley poem.

Before the Fall, there is: light, so much light, and he is a creature of light, and they are all creatures of light, and the Almighty shines on them, bright and eternal.

Before the Fall, there is: the flock. The hive is too mighty to be diminished into particulars. They are facets of Her grace, splintered into being. He wonders sometimes if it hurt. Wonders why She made them if it meant breaking Herself apart.

(After the Fall, he knows: the loneliness would have crushed Her.)

Before the Fall, there is: him.

He had a name, back then. He thinks it burnt away somewhere between Heaven and Hell. He thinks he wasn’t allowed to bring it with him. He thinks the Almighty wrenched it away from him and split Herself again to make another of his image; disposable parts of a whole.

On his more charitable days, he thinks he let it go.

He lands in Hell a new creature. If to be an angel was to be a fragment of the Almighty given weight upon the world, to be one no longer is to be… angry.

When everything else burns away, that’s what is left behind. The glittering diamond at the base of his soul: deep, burning rage. There is no fragile Hope in the bottom of his box to soothe the ache of the evils unleashed upon the world. There is only the anger.

His shape was lost too, in the Fall. By the time he lands, he has forgotten what it was to stand that way. To be anything other than this coil.

The anger leaves him too, on the third day afterwards. It leaves an endless crush of panic in its wake. He winds himself as tight as this new form allows and ignores the other not-angels. He slowly and achingly loses the memories of above. He has been cleaved from a whole and he does not know how to sustain himself alone.

The anger will come back, in due time, but the horror will never abandon him.

* * *

They send him up, at the beginning of the new world, to cause trouble.

It has been time. They do not mark it the way humans will learn to, with the shifting of the moons and stars in the sky. They mark it as now and then and in-between. There is no need for more precision.

There will be now.

He does not know how long he has held this form. He has another, now, which stands on two legs again and stretches its wings. They have taught themselves this. He thinks perhaps he looks the way he used to. He knows there were not eyes like these in Heaven.

The Garden is glorious. He winds himself among the roots of the trees and flicks his tongue against the sky to feel the scents in the air. He digs his teeth into fruits and leaves greedy bite marks in their flesh. He drapes himself over rocks and lets the Almighty shine on him again, and it feels glorious.

He causes trouble, of course.

There is the tree, and there is him, whispering to the woman. He feels sick and gleeful in equal turns as he hisses. It is glorious.

He knows the burn of being found wanting far too hotly in his own throat, and he needs someone else to share the burden with. He wants them to know. He wants their questions to be answered. It is selfish and selfless all at once. He slithers out as the Almighty booms in with a clap of thunder.

There is an angel on the steps. He takes a form to mirror his, wings spread long, and stands by his side. The angel is bright and marvelous. Shining where he gathers dust. It begins to rain for the first time. Hungrily, selfishly, he steps closer to the warmth and the light.

The angel lifts up his wing to shelter him.

Something new starts to burn.

* * *

The memories that he has of Heaven are all of love.

Love and light, which felt the same back then, given by the Almighty. They both warmed but never burned. Burning didn’t exist back then, he doesn’t think. It didn’t happen.

He doesn’t imagine the rest of them remember it. Love comes back when he sees Aziraphale’s wings, spread broad against the distance. A drop of rain falls from one of the angel’s feathers and lands on his forehead. He glances over at the angel's profile against the clouds and thinks _oh, right. This is what it was to love. This is what it was to be loved._

That isn’t when it happens. Not exactly. But it begins then.

* * *

There is no love in Hell. It isn’t something that demons have.

They are reflections of angels, upside-down and inside-out. All the sharp corners exposed. None of the warmth. They don’t feel. They have feelings, occasionally, but they don’t feel. The difference is urgent and impossible to vocalize. It is the difference between miracles and magic. One of them is a reaction, an extension of the Almighty, a necessary evil. The other is part of being.

Angels didn’t feel, either, when he was one. There was love, but it wasn’t their own. He doesn’t know if that’s changed. If there’s more love now for fewer angels. If they have room now to feel.

It isn’t likely.

* * *

He finds himself seeking out Aziraphale like a moth to an open flame. Doomed to end in misery, but determined to try.

The first time, in Mesopotamia, it’s because Aziraphale is an angel. Nothing else. He doesn’t know the feeling fluttering inside of him as anything other than holy. He doesn’t know that love comes in different shapes, comes upside-down and inside-out, with every sharp corner exposed. He doesn’t know there is love in the world that is not given by the Almighty.

He thinks any angel will give him this. This is just the only one who’s let him close enough for it.

Their shoulders brush for a split second. Four layers of fabric between them and his skin burns. Holiness like that doesn’t belong to him anymore. He shifts away and tries not to look directly at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale looks at him anyway. He feels soft eyes on the side of his face. He keeps his eyes ahead; tries not to turn and look for signs of pity.

* * *

By Golgotha, he has realized that it’s only Aziraphale. The other angels don’t visit Earth as often, but they did come on occasion, back in those days, and he ran into one of them in Tyre a century or so ago. _Ran into,_ physically, his shoulder bumping against hers and sending both of them, burning, to the ground.

There was nothing sweet and stomach-turning about it. Only the pain, and the recoil of her hatred.

He seeks out Aziraphale again. Refuses to acknowledge why he’s doing it, or even that he is, but the angel isn’t hard to find. The Earth is quieter and dimmer then, and Aziraphale’s light glows incandescent against the skies.

He has a harder time convincing himself to stay away.

* * *

Eight years later, it’s an accident, at least on his part. He doesn’t know about Aziraphale. He doesn’t know if there are any true accidents left to them, if the Almighty has given up on the stray pieces of Her might and left them to wander of their own will. Maybe this is all part of Her plan, scripted by Her will, and this is meant to happen.

The thought makes him angrier than it should.

Aziraphale is the one who greets him, this time, and he wonders if maybe the draw goes both ways between them. He knows it isn’t only about holiness for him, about the pull of what he used to have. It’s about Aziraphale’s nervous smile and the curls of his hair and the stutter to his voice.

Aziraphale almost invites him to dinner.

(He almost says yes.)

* * *

A millennium and a half later, their shoulders brush again in the Globe Theatre. One of them leans towards the other, and the other answers, or vice versa, and their arms end up pressed together.

It doesn’t burn anymore.

A desperate, hopeful part of him would like to think that it’s because Aziraphale has been slowly, trudgingly dragging him back up toward the light over the years. His hands, shaking in his pockets, know otherwise. He thinks about the temptation Aziraphale did for him two months ago when he lost the coin toss for Cologne.

Sauntering vaguely downwards, indeed.

* * *

The touches come more and more often, after that, and he isn’t sure whose fault it is anymore. They blend together with frequency. They come together with greater frequency. In 1793, Aziraphale reaches across the table and pushes his sunglasses up for him where they’ve slipped down his nose. In 1941, he catches Aziraphale’s elbow when he stumbles and doesn’t quite let go.

In 1967, their hands brush against the thermos when Aziraphale hands it to him, and it feels more dangerous than the holy water inside. If anything is going to ruin him, it’ll be this. The flare of heat in his chest when their skin touches.

_Maybe one day,_ Aziraphale says.

He wants to say _we can do it now, angel,_ but he doesn’t.

_You go too fast for me,_ Aziraphale says, and they both know he’s talking about more than the Bentley. There’s a hand on his forearm for a split second, and then he watches Aziraphale leave.

Nothing about this is fast. This is leaden and aching. Six thousand years, and he still jolts when Aziraphale touches him. He tries not to feel bitter about it.

* * *

After the Armageddon that isn’t, in Aziraphale’s body, he feels the hive-mind, the divine thrum of the Almighty. He sees Heaven for the first time since the Fall through Aziraphale’s eyes.

The vague, blurred scraps of memory he has managed to hold onto don’t look like anything he sees. Heaven is vast and empty and cold. A mirror of Hell with the walls painted white. He tries to find the warmth he remembers. The love. The feeling of belonging.

He comes up empty.

He can’t tell if this is how Aziraphale feels, or if this is his own design flaw: no matter what body he walks with, no matter how divine the face he wears, he doesn’t belong here anymore.

He doesn’t think Aziraphale does either, though. After all, he can feel _something_. Something that remembers being brilliant and beautiful, burning as bright as the sword he’d been given. Some poor ghost of holiness, flickering alongside his heartbeat.

Something that isn’t, and never will be, enough.

* * *

They clasp hands to switch back over. It doesn’t burn.

It feels right.

_Let me tempt you to a spot of lunch,_ he says. Aziraphale smiles back, says, no hesitation, _Temptation accomplished,_ and they both know he’s talking about more than the Ritz.

**Author's Note:**

> by the time i realized i hadn't actually used crowley's name once, i was already committed to it. we must suffer for our art.
> 
> thank you for reading! please leave kudos/comments if you liked it and feel free to talk to me at jewfrogs.tumblr.com! ♡


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